9 Things I Learned While Researching Bigfoot Museums

While researching for the “Get Swept Off Your Feet at These Bigfoot Museums” episode on the podcast, I ended up learning a few unexpected tidbits. For instance, where you can polka with Bigfoot in the Everglades and see his butt print in Georgia. However, I also learned that the same city where Kool-Aid was invented has an interesting Bigfoot connection too.

Let’s check out nine things I learned while researching Bigfoot museums. See which you already knew about too, and which are new to you.

1. I learned where Kool-Aid was invented while researching Bigfoot museums.

Harriet “Bigfoot Lady” McFeely opened the Bigfoot Crossroads of America Museum and Research Center in Hastings, Nebraska, in 2018. Hastings is also the town where Kool-Aid was invented.

2. Nebraska has an official Bigfoot Lady.

Harriet “Bigfoot Lady” McFeely comes by her moniker honestly. In October 2020, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts bestowed the distinction of the state’s official “Nebraska Bigfoot Lady” title on her.

3. Nebraska also has an official Bigfoot Day.

Governor Ricketts also issued an official proclamation designating October 20th as “Bigfoot Crossroads of Nebraska Day.”

4. Nebraska also has the only Bigfoot garden.

Most of the Bigfoot museums have similar displays and artifacts, but each have their own unique spins too. However, Harriet  McFeely’s Bigfoot Crossroads of America Museum and Research Center had the only garden I came across.

The museum’s website explains the idea for the Bigfoot Handicapped Accessible Garden was born when a wheelchair-bound attendee at the Nebraska Bigfoot Conference expressed an interest in experiencing what people see and hear during Bigfoot investigations. Her garden attempts to recreate that.

5. There’s a Bigfoot beauty contest in the Everglades.

It’s not for female Bigfoots though. It’s for real women. But I guess if a lady Bigfoot wanted to enter, she could.

The same people who own and operate the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters in Ochopee, Florida, also own the Trail Lakes Campground. Roadside America reported that the campground holds the Everglades Skunk Ape Festival every year and one of the highlights is the Miss Skunk Ape contest.

There’s also a Skuntoberfest every October. You know what that means…polka + Bigfoot = the Chicken Dance! Now that’s a sight I’d like to see!

6. Many Bigfoot museums also host Bigfoot cons and festivals.

As mentioned above, the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters and their Campground hosts the Skunk Ape Festival and Bigfoot Crossroads of America Museum and Research Center hosts an annual Nebraska Bigfoot Conference.

The Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey, Colorado, hosts a Bigfoot Adventure Weekend, complete with camping, lectures, and investigations in search of the big hairy guy.

The West Virginia Bigfoot Museum in Sutton, West Virginia, hosts the West Virginia Bigfoot Festival. 

7. One museum has a Bigfoot butt print.

All of the Bigfoot museums had a couple of artifacts in common. They displayed sighting maps and at least one Bigfoot footprint. Some even had Bigfoot handprints.

But one, Expedition: Bigfoot! The Sasquatch Museum in Blue Ridge, Georgia, had a cast of something I’d never heard of before: a Bigfoot butt print!

8. The first time Bigfoot hit pop culture was from a newspaper article, not the Patterson-Gimlin film.

Before researching the museums for this Bigfoot episode, I would’ve told you that Loren Coleman’s International Cryptozoology Museum was the first of its kind. I would have been wrong. Something else I would’ve been wrong about would’ve been declaring that the Patterson-Gimlin film that allegedly captured footage of a Bigfoot in 1967 was what made both the region of Humboldt County famous, as well as Bigfoot.

Nope.

It definitely helped catapult the legend into the public eye more, but according to History, it actually started in 1958 with a newspaper article in the Humboldt Times. It “highlighted a fun, if dubious, letter from a reader about loggers in northern California who’d discovered mysteriously large footprints.”

To reporter Andrew Genzoli’s surprise, who thought it might simply make for “a good Sunday morning story,” it fascinated readers. They wanted more.

So the Humboldt Times printed follow-up articles about “Big Foot,” the name loggers gave to whatever had created the prints.

About 10 years later came the Patterson-Gimlin film, which cemented the public’s fascination with Bigfoot. Likely because seeing is believing, after all.

9. I missed a Bigfoot museum during my research.

Although I probably would’ve found it if I’d expanded my search to include Bigfoot museums outside of the U.S.

But it was thanks to a comment from Priscila Bettis on my post about where to find 7 Bigfoot Museums that I learned about one I didn’t include in the podcast episode: the Harrison Visitor Centre and Sasquatch Museum in the village of Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada.

I had never heard of it before Priscilla said she’d visited, but then just a couple of weeks later there it was again. This time when Coast to Coast AM wrote about how the Canadian sasquatch museum recently got $1 million for renovations.

The Bigfoot Museums Episode

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Were any of these Bigfoot revelations new to you too?